The present invention relates to mechanical locking arrangements for enabling mechanical interlocking between two devices, in particular to locking arrangements that comprise a plunger unit and a lock and release unit.
The technical evolution, in terms of features such as weight and size, in the field of portable mobile telephone terminals has reached a point where physiognomic considerations must be made. Limitations in terms of size of previous generations of mobile terminals were dictated by the size of the components of the terminal, not least the size of the battery pack. Present day terminals, on the other hand, comprise a small number of highly integrated low-power circuits that easily fit inside a palm-sized unit. In fact the dimensions of the smaller among the recently developed terminals are such that the distance between the loudspeaker and the microphone has become an important design factor. In order to further miniaturize the terminals, while still enabling a proper alignment between the loudspeaker/microphone and the ear/mouth of the user, mechanical solutions such as foldable lids and arms comprising a microphone or a speaker have become commonplace.
A problem relating to foldable and flip-lid equipped portable terminals, and in fact to any portable device that comprises protruding members that are attached by e.g. a hinge unit and are capable of being folded between different positions in relation to a main housing of the device, is how to enable single action lock and single action release of the protruding member.
An example of the state of the art in this respect is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,327,584 where it is shown a portable radio with a cover release mechanism. Several separate parts act together to form the cover release mechanism: an engaging portion with a hole, a locking plate operated upon by an operating portion, a wire spring mounted on a stopper. Needless to say, by the mere fact that it comprises a multitude of sub-parts, this mechanism is relatively complicated in terms of both assembly and manufacture.
Another example of locking arrangements is to be found in UK patent application GB-2106977. A vanity case comprising a receptacle and a cover member has an arrangement for enabling snap engagement between the receptacle and the cover member. The snap engagement and disengagement are accomplished by applying force between two resilient latch tongues, one comprised in the cover member and one being part of the receptacle. The force is applied via a separate slider element.
It is hence a problem, which is addressed by the present invention, how to enable one-hand single action lock and one-hand single action release of a protruding member such as e.g. a flip-lid at a portable communication device.
Yet another problem addressed by the present invention is how to enable single action lock and release of the protruding member, while utilizing a minimum of number of components.
The object of the present invention is to overcome the problems as stated above. This is in short achieved by providing a locking arrangement in which a plunger unit is capable of being engaged in and disengaged from a lock and release unit which comprises a resilient part and a fixed part.
In some more detail, it is shown a locking arrangement at a portable device. The device comprises a main body and a movable protruding member. The protruding member is switchable between at least a first position and a second position with respect to the main body. The locking arrangement comprises a plunger unit and a lock and release unit with a fixed part and a resilient part. The resilient part is resilient along at least one direction of resilience away from the fixed part. The plunger unit is switchable, along a direction of insertion and retraction, between a disengaged position and an engaged position between the fixed part and the resilient part of the lock and release unit.
An advantage of the present invention is that only a small motion, e.g. a hand action, is required by a user of the invention in order to engage and disengage the plunger unit to and from the lock and release unit and thus releasing the protruding member from the main body of the device.
Another advantage of the present invention is that, by the fact that the lock and release unit can be produced in one single unit, the complexity, and hence also the cost, relating to manufacture and assembly onto the device is low.